Thursday, July 3, 2008

Ruffle My Feathers

I’m addicted. To ruffles. I love ruffles. I add them to a lot of the things I make. But if you do them by hand (the ol’ “run-a-basting-stitch-and-pull-the-thread-to-gather” method) like I’ve been doing, they can be tedious, frustrating, and just a regular pain the ass. Since I’ve got a couple of projects in the works (more on that next posting!) that require an insane amount of ruffling, I decided to invest in a ruffler attachment for my sewing machine. What is a ruffler attachment, you may ask? Here:

Looks intimidating, doesn’t it? Basically, it replaces the regular foot on your sewing machine and allows you to create beautiful, uniformly-spaced ruffles in a flash, saving you a lot of time and headache. You can create tight and short ruffles, long and loose ruffles, and even pleats. There is some set-up and optimization involved, but I found this fantastic (free!) ebook online that I highly recommend.

But first things first…I have to figure out how to attach it to my machine. Caught up with my housework and anything else I might need to do, I holed up in my sewing room Sunday afternoon, ready to figure this thing out. Now, the ebook walks you through examples of everything, but sometimes reading something and then actually implementing it can be tricky.

I fooled with it….and fiddled with it….and cussed at it. (Should I mention that I have an engineering degree? Which would make one think that I could figure something like this out.) My husband offered to help me (which resulted in a dirty look from me...what? does he think he knows more about a sewing machine than I do? The nerve!)

And finally, FINALLY, I managed to get the attachment on the machine. It wasn’t difficult…it was just a matter of seeing how it went on. Now that I’ve figured it out, the next time it will probably take all of 30 seconds. Then I grabbed some scrap pieces of fabric and took the time to work through the ebook’s optimization worksheets (which will save me beaucoup time later) and Voila! Ruffles!

Next it was time to apply it to an actual project. I picked something simple…a little ruffled purse. And I decided that it needed a matching headband to go with it.

I think it came out great. And the ruffling was so incredibly easy! This little accessory set is available right now in my etsy shop! http://www.itssewsweet.etsy.com/